


the loved ones

by darkcomedylateshow



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Jared headcanons, M/M, Richard is bi and bad at communicating, probably some canon divergence, unobtrusive ocs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 02:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11220996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcomedylateshow/pseuds/darkcomedylateshow
Summary: He has elderly friends. Heactuallyhas elderly friends. This is fine.





	the loved ones

**Author's Note:**

> an anon sent me a prompt a hot minute ago to the effect of “Richard is a total know-it-all, but especially about Jared.” this is… sort of about that but mostly tries to answer some other questions i had about their relationship, Jared’s life offscreen and outside of the Pied Piper bubble, and also how “normal people” would feasibly treat the both of them.
> 
> that said, this is VERY MUCH lighthearted wish fulfillment, so, pretty average stuff from me LOL. enjoy!

     Richard tries not to visibly claw at the armrest of the tiny wing chair in the corner, a thousand afghans and granny-square blankets draped over its back. He wouldn’t usually picture a house like this as belonging to people named _Muriel_ and _Eloise_ , but as he always has to remind himself, this is Northern California, and the tiny, dour church ladies he’s used to are few and far between.

     “So, what was it you said you did again, dear?” this unsettlingly kind woman with the oxygen tank asks him, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of herbal tea. “I know Donald said something about—”   

     “Richard and I met through work, Muriel,” Jared cuts in, his expression growing more tense. Maybe that’s just in his imagination. “Actually—well, I’ll embarrass him if I say this, but he inadvertently rescued me from the bad situation I was in before. At Hooli.” 

     Muriel pauses, and then her face suddenly lights up: “Of course, of course. He’s told us all about you.”   

     The other woman (her wife, who he’d first introduced to Muriel years ago, as Jared explained in the car) steps away from the cutting board she’s been zeroed in on for the last fifteen minutes, and leans against the kitchen island. She’s younger than Muriel—maybe in her late sixties—and hair is cropped and dyed black, almost auburn in parts, the sleeves of her denim shirt rolled to her elbows.   

     “This is _that_ Richard?” she asks, regarding him with a stiff smile—as if to show him she isn’t hostile, but not much more. His stomach turns. “Donald, you two haven't—”

     Muriel reaches for her walker and stands up, unwavering in her cheeriness. “Eloise, won’t you help me pick out something from the cellar? And we should really start getting the table ready. Can you two finish with the salad?“ 

     “Of course,” Jared says. His face is calm again, but he can tell he’s close to yanking him from the seat by the arm, already preemptively apologizing for bringing him here. Richard stands up and smiles at him in a way he hopes is reassuring, and goes to the kitchen. 

* * *

     His last date before all of this, what feels like ages before he willingly got in a car headed to a ranch in Sonoma, was also his all-time worst. It was an actual get-your-number-and-go-to-dinner type date. It was with some girl named Hannah; a freelance web designer who used to work at Hooli, too, although they’d never met before. It had been going well on the whole, until his mind jumped to the worst possible thing mid-conversation, something stupid like _right, gastronomy just means the study of food and culture—my friend Jared actually knows a lot about—_

     “You mean Jared _Dunn_? That guy always kind of gave me the creeps.” 

     “What?” Richard picked at his dessert, trying to look casual. “I mean—why’s that?”

     “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “something about his demeanor always just bothered me.”   

     “That’s funny,” he said, then caught himself. "Or—well, it’s not that funny, but I understand. He really is a great guy if you get to know him. It’s just that people don’t always, um…respond well to him?” 

     “He seemed _nice_ ”—she repeated this word as an afterthought, free of any actual meaning—“just not very good at picking up on social cues.”   

     “God, you just described everyone I know.” It was meant to be a joke, but he was the only one who laughed. He sloshed the wine in his glass, a tiny purple stain dotting his thumb. 

     “And the oversharing,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Some people are okay with it, but for me it was just—it’s too much.”   

     “It’s not for the attention, though,” he says, his tongue starting to feel heavy from the wine. “Not like everybody else. It’s like—he thinks he needs to give a disclaimer to everyone he meets, ‘hey, I’m kinda fucked up and have a lot of trauma but I’m fine!’ Don’t get me wrong, some of the stuff he tells me, just offhand, is _insane_. But he’s a literal genius. Like Jesus Christ, he’s a walking encyclopedia on naval history, 19th century American poets, the DSM—” 

     “You know a lot about Jared,” Hannah said, quietly.   

     “Um.” Richard put his glass down. "Yeah, I guess I do.”   

     He saw the waiter come down with two more drinks and, mercifully, the check.

* * *

     “I’m so sorry,” Jared starts, the second they’re alone. “I didn’t tell you everything when we were in the car.”   

     “It’s okay,” he says, “just—what did you tell her about me that made her hate me?”   

     “Eloise doesn’t hate you. She’s just a little protective of me. Really, she’s like this with everyone I bring over.” 

     “Jared.” He leans both elbows onto the counter and looks him in the eye. “What does that mean.”   

     “It means,” Jared says, absurdly calm, “that she’s like this with everyone I bring over, Richard. We do this dinner every year, and she always has something to say about my guests. It has nothing to do with us.”   

     Richard notices the tips of his ears are red. He decides not to prod anymore, even if the answer just makes him feel worse.   

     Instead he steals a sliver of cucumber off the cutting board and chews it. He feels the urge to make himself useful in the kitchen, but Jared’s stonewalling him by standing at the counter, shoulders squared, slicing the tomatoes at a worrying pace. He can’t help but think he looks just like Eloise minutes ago, right down to the posture. 

     When he sees a person he cares about in pain, he mirrors them. Richard knows that. He also knows she can’t be his birth mother, because she died when he was twelve. When he told him this, at four a.m. lying face to face in a bunk bed, Richard reached out his hand and pulled it to his chest.   

     This is not good. It’s fine. They’re going to be fine.   

     A huge, bony cat butts his head against Richard’s ankle and slides past him. He’s counted three. It yowls up at the counter, probably well aware of the biggest pushover in the room. But Jared doesn’t fold. 

     “It’s not for you, Bartleby.” He scoops it up in his arms, a heap of gray fur and flailing paws, and attempts to hand it off to Richard. “Can you take him outside? Please?”   

     He can’t really say no, so he gets a good grip on the cat and heads out the screen door. When he gets outside, Eloise is standing on the patio, uncorking a bottle of wine.   

     “He doesn’t let everybody hold him like that,” she says, nonplussed. As she says it, Bartleby slips out of Richard’s arms. (What an awful name.) “He’s a little anxious.”   

     “Me too,” Richard says. It’s a joke, but not really.   

     “So how did you meet Donald?” she asks, cutting through whatever fifteen layers of bullshit he was operating on. “Why do you call him that other name?”   

     “Um.” He stops, realizing he’s never had to even really confront the issue. “When I met him, that’s what he told me his name was, and it just stuck—I mean, he’s never asked me to switch. Are you saying that I should?”  

    “I don’t have any opinion on what you should do,” she says, and he physically feels himself get knocked down a peg or two realizing this is far from the first time she’s had this conversation. "I just expect you to treat Donald well. He has a knack for getting manipulated by other people who don’t actually value him.”  

     “I’m not one of those people,” he says. “He’s really helped me. Through a lot of awful shit. And—he’s told me, you know, things about himself—”   

     “He tells everyone his things,” Eloise says. “Anyone who’s willing to listen.”   

     “Like—the real things.”   

     “Like what?”   

     Jared steps out onto the patio, salad bowl in his hands. “Everything’s ready. Where should I put it?” 

* * *

     The first thing he did after the worst date of his life, after climbing apologetically out of a Lyft, was make a beeline to the garage. Jared was there, and awake—he almost always was at that hour, back then. He was under the cheap duvet, on his laptop, leaning against some milk crates.

     “How did it go?”   

     “Jared,” he said, staggering to the air mattress and kneeling at the edge. “I fucked up.”   

     “Oh.” He shut his laptop and sat up straight, watching him crawl closer. Richard was sure he was trying not to touch him, not to physically engage at all, expertly restrained. Always so respectful of his boundaries, always Richard’s needs before his own. “What happened? Did something go wrong with Hannah?”   

     (In hindsight, he seemed a little too eager to ask.)   

     “I—just realized I need to stop fucking kidding myself,” he blurted, feeling blindly for Jared’s knee. Was he crying already? It felt like it, on his face. He was pretty loaded. “I need to stop. Stop pretending.”   

     “Pretending what?”   

     “That— _you’re_ not the person. The person I want to be with.” He could barely understand himself, he was sobbing so loudly, probably sounding ridiculous. “But it’s so stupid and impossible that I have to lie to myself about it.”

     “Richard,” he said, hands suddenly on his shoulders, dead calm. “You’re very drunk.”   

     He saw right through him. Something about his placid denial, the insistence that nothing was wrong, enraged him in that moment. “I see you looking at me all the time. I notice everything, dude, so don’t just fucking pretend you don’t want this—”   

     “Richard.”   

     He tried to lean in, writing checks he can’t cash. “Please. Just tell me it’s possible.”   

     In some far-off fantasy world Jared could have just dropped his scruples and they could have fucked right there, on that awful air mattress, with his head two inches from the concrete. But instead he just grabbed both his wrists and held onto them, forcing Richard to go still.   

     “I do. I _do_ want it.” He looked him square in the eye. “But I don’t really think it should happen like this. Do you?”   

     It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Richard pulled his hands away—he wasn’t holding on that hard—and considered his options. Then he shook his head.   

     “Okay. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”   

     “No.”   

     He cleared his throat and put his head down, on the corner of the pillow. Because there’s some fucking good left in the world, Jared slipped his arm around his shoulder and pressed his lips to a spot beneath his eyebrow, and neither of them had to say a word. 

* * *

     More people start to trickle in, some of them names Richard actually recognizes—Muriel’s daughter and tiny blonde grandchild, aunts and distant friends that seem oddly excited once they find out who he is. Jared does a lot of the talking for him, anyway, and lays it on thick (probably to apologize without ever having to say anything.) _Richard’s a Stanford-educated engineer; Richard’s got a brilliant mind; you two would find a lot to talk about._ But before he even scratches the surface with anybody he gets whisked off to someone else.  

     Which is just as well, really. He’s never good with strangers, and as usual, Jared took steps to circumvent it, steps Richard wouldn’t even think to take. Maybe he is like every other schlubby boyfriend he’s brought over.   

     Muriel rings some kind of New Age dinner bell, loud and clangy, and everyone gathers around the outdoor table. It’s beautiful, actually—the backyard stretches out for what looks like forever, a wooded path not far down the hill. Once Richard finds his seat, he glances up and suddenly sees Jared pouring him a glass of wine. 

     Something about the whole image is just weird. The only thing that comes out of his mouth is: “Oh. It’s white?”   

     “Red wouldn’t go with this meal,” Jared says, “technically. You’re at a table of oenophiles that would say so.” 

     “Right.” He already feels a little disoriented.   

     “Not a big wine drinker?” Muriel asks.   

     “I _like_ it, just—” 

     “That’s quite alright. It’s meant to be enjoyed with food,” she says. “This is from our vinery. We only serve what we make to friends.”   

     “And Trader Joe’s,” Eloise says.   

     “And Trader Joe’s. But that’s just to keep the lights on. Should we have a toast?”

* * *

     The wine goes down light and easy, perfect for an amateur like himself. Eloise, spearing a few pieces of vegan gnocchi, addresses him from the other side of the table: “What were we talking about before, Richard?” 

     “Whatever it was,” Jared pipes in, “I’m sure the rest of the table wouldn’t find it very interesting.”   

     Of course, everyone but the three of them are caught up in other conversations. Richard looks around for some other kind of lifeline that he knows does not exist.   

     “It was about you, Donald,” she says, perfectly genteel. “Just—that you two had gotten to know each other quite well in the last few months.”   

     Jared knits his brow, his voice pitching up the way it does when he’s upset: “We’ve known each other about four years.”   

     “I know,” Eloise says, “but this development is recent?”   

     He turns to Richard, but it seems like he’s already made up his mind by the time he looks at him. “About six weeks. I don’t know why it’s so important.”   

     Even she backs off after that, but Richard can tell it’s with great restraint. “Forgive me. I was just curious. Especially after the conversations we’ve had before.”  

     “Eloise, it feels—really unnecessary to bring that up,” Jared says (easily the harshest thing Richard’s heard him say to someone he cares for.) “Of course I forgive you. But I—” 

     “No, you’re right, this is total bullshit.” Richard pushes his wine glass away from him, a little stunned at the words coming out of him—but he feels stone-cold sober and fed up with watching this same scene play out. “Jared’s a grown adult. He can make his own decisions about who he wants to date without screening them for you.”   

     “Richard,” he says, his hand suddenly clasping the top of his arm, “it’s not that. She’s talking about something I said before—” 

     “It doesn’t matter what you said, like, upwards of a year ago. I was probably a massive dick to you back then.” He feels eyes on him, but keeps going anyway: “She’s just using your words against you. It’s manipulative as shit and I’m not playing along with it.”   

     Suddenly the table is quiet. Muriel asks, slowly: “Is everything alright, dear?”   

     Richard shakes his head, pushing his chair out and standing up. “No. Sorry, I should—I should go. Sorry, everyone.” 

     He hears Jared say his name, but it’s too late. He makes a break for it into the woods.

* * *

     Somehow he managed to steal the rest of the wine from the ice bucket, too. He's burned enough bridges today that he figured anything else can't hurt. So there he is, wandering on someone else’s property with a bottle of Sauvignon blanc. At the bottom of the hill is a tiny river, snaking a few miles down—he finds a swing chair hanging from a tree and falls back into it, just now noticing he’s half in the bag.   

     Jared’s not far behind, of course. He secretly hopes he’ll turn around and prolong this conversation for as much time as possible, but the sound of his voice, his footsteps get closer until it’s unavoidable.   

     Then he’s standing behind him, hand on the back of the chair, steadying the rope. “Are you okay?” 

     “Why are you asking if _I’m_ okay? I just fucked up twenty people’s evening when I was supposed to impress them.” 

     “I don’t care about impressing anyone,” Jared says. “Eloise—I owed it to her, for you two to meet. That’s all.”   

     “Well, she met me,” Richard says, mustering a completely inappropriate laugh. “What did you say about me before that was so bad?”     

     He sits down beside him. “Just that I—talk a lot and I wasn’t sure if you listened, always. But I know that’s not true now—”   

     “Of course it’s not true.” Richard turns to him. “Jared, I remember _everything_ you tell me. Like how you’re a Pisces and prefer regular Cheerios to fucking honey nut. Like—how in the tenth grade you had to memorize 'O Captain, My Captain’ and it stuck with you forever. You used to daydream about sailing away from wherever you were but you were in landlocked Pennsylvania so you didn’t even see a boat in a harbor until you were nineteen and took a bus to the Jersey shore, but you kept saying you were going to _the shore_ because that was the only thing you heard people call it, you didn’t even know it was in New Jersey until you got there. You love children. And animals. And anyone who listens to you which means a ton of shitty people take advantage of you, or they treat you like shit because they don’t get it. 

     "Your favorite book is Moby Dick because you like stories about the ocean and—I don’t know, you probably relate to the whole thing of chasing something aimlessly and having it haunt you every day of your life until it kills you, but I don’t want it to kill you, Jared, I just want you to be well-adjusted and fucking _happy—_ ”   

     He stops him. “I _am_ happy. I’m happier than ever with you. Always.” 

     “I’m sorry,” Richard says. “I shouldn’t have said all that. I made a prick of myself in front of people you really wanted me to meet. And you worked so hard to try to make them _like_ me—I fucked up whatever chance we had.”

     “I don’t care what they think.” Jared reaches for his hand, looking strangely giddy about all of this. “I mean—I _do_ , but I care more about you. About us.” 

     “There’s an ‘us’ now.” He doesn’t say it out of skepticism—it’s something closer to relief. 

     “Yeah.” There’s a pause as he slips his arm around his waist, a troubled expression when Richard doesn’t answer, even as he leans heavily into his side. “You _do_ know that. Right?” 

     “I know.” He stares out in front of him, at the dappled sunlight and soft grass, in this place he knows he’s no longer welcome in, and squeezes Jared’s hand. “Is it okay if we go home?” 

     “Of course,” Jared says. They do not move. 


End file.
